This invention relates to a fire escape and extinction system particularly for high buildings.
It is general practice nowadays, in the event of a building catching fire, to have a fire brigade to rescue its occupants and extinguish the fire, the firemen employing to this aim truck-mounted telescoping ladders, wherefrom the fire is fought by means of fire hoses.
When people are trapped in the burning building, these are usually expected to jump out of windows and balconies onto stretched jumping canvas sheets to cushion their fall. The issue may be highly dramatic where the building happens to be a tall one, such as a tower building or "skyscraper", in which case the aforementioned measures cannot provide any effective solution to the problem posed by height: in fact, ladders cannot span the full height of the building far above about thirty meters, and jumping sheets become unusable on account of the speed at which a person would fall to the ground. Moreover, operating difficulties are also encountered sometimes with the various fire fighting arrangements, or such arrangements may prove inadequate to successfully fight a conflagration of unusually large size.